Asphyxia
by thesewordselope
Summary: Every breath is an effort because of the way your heart is beating in your throat with the fear that this happy idiot will just keep talking until he very fucking literally passes out. That would be a hell of a way to go, off on some monologue tangent about things that are probably better left unsaid anyway, even if you were in a place where you can't choke on the air itself.


You both learned a very long time ago how to dress your own wounds, but you're quickly learning that it's a hell of a lot better when you don't have to. Jake's been whining for a few days about how his tattoo is "itching awfully deep-like", and you've been biting back concern that it might be getting infected. You've got some gauze in your sylladex, so you pop it out and decide to join him next to the fire. The underlings seem to not like fire, so you've started lighting them when you rest in the evenings, even though the quality of the light in this place never changes much. Tonight, it's lit at the inside end of one of the fenestrations in this particular temple, and you're both sitting out on the ledge side, probably about ten feet from the drop and a few hundred feet up. You'd been staring out at the sky, which doesn't ever change from the same greenish orange hue that sorta reminds you of the sunset over the ocean on a stormy night. It seems fitting. Seems fucking perfect that way.

You've gotten used to not being able to hear your own breath or your own voice without this weird distant muffle, but it's a little more jarring when someone else is trying to talk to you. Similar to how Jake is doing right now as you approach him with the bandages.

TT: Didn't catch that.

GT: I said i dont see why this thing isnt healing properly. Its been weeks since it got caked with mud! And that was just the once!

TT: One of these days I'm going to teach you about germ theory and how it revolutionized the medical profession.

GT: I know about germs. My point is that it seemed to already be healed when that happened so i dont rightly know why its giving me so much bother NOW.

TT: Dude, just shut up for a moment and let me clean it.

You switch off your chat client so that he can't make any more baseless protests, and you lean over to grab his wrist, feeling the hair of his forearm with your fingertips for a second- you're still not used to that, to touching other people so blithely- before trying to push up the sleeve of his silly jacket. It doesn't go up far enough, so you reach for the buttons.

That's when you hear a very protracted, but still very muffled, verbal protest. You roll your eyes and switch the chat back on.

GT: Im a grown man goddammit i can very well undress myself!

TT: Assertions of fledgling manhood aside, I have literally watched you take a shit on countless supposedly sacred burial grounds. Are you really going to get all blushing virgin on me over some fucking jacket buttons?

Jake brushes your hand away and fumbles with the large buttons at first, and you can't tell if he's nervous about taking it off- or you seeing him without it- or if it's just some general principle of the thing. Some kind of "didn't alchemize this choice ensemble to _not_ wear it," attitude or whatever. He finally gets it off and folds it carefully in his lap, as though he thinks the temple floors aren't good enough for it, and then he starts on his undershirt. That surprises you a bit, since you were going to leave that on, but you're not complaining. There's something mesmerizing about the way he carefully and methodically undoes each button with his thick fingers. It's probably the most deliberate action you've ever seen him perform that didn't involve something with a trigger, and it hooks you. You can't stop watching as more and more of his chest gets revealed with each twist of his fingers, and his skin looks bronze in the light from the fire.

Once both of his shirts are off, he looks around the room like maybe he thinks the underlings are pulling some creepy voyeur shit from the shadows on his shitty little striptease, but the two of you are the only ones around. If he thinks someone is spying on him, it's probably not the underlings that he needs to be worried about. That's when you realize you've been staring transfixed at the whole business of your best bro taking off his clothes, but you're not self-conscious about it because he can't see your eyes through the gas mask and probably has no idea. Only when you're right up next to each other with the light shining nearby can you even see each other's eyes, so you move into his personal space, sitting down on the ground next to him and looking through the shaded windows of his mask. He's still staring off into the darkness and not at you. Fine, that's fine. Probably better that way.

You grab his bare arm and rotate it toward you so that you can get a better look at his tattoo. It doesn't look too bad, but it is a bit red, so you get some antiseptic and rub it in with your fingertips. You focus on Sweet Bro's beard, which seems to have gotten the worst of it, but you wind up doing a much more thorough job than necessity dictates because the feel of someone else's skin under your hand is still so fucking novel. Jake doesn't wince, and you don't expect him to. You've both been through this a million times before. It's just that now you have each other, and it's better but also hard to get used to. You unroll some bandage, and normally you'd rip it off with your teeth, but that would require taking the mask off, so you saw it off on the edge of your sword instead. The jagged edge gets tucked under Jake's armpit, and you slowly wrap the rest of it around his bicep, touching the skin with just the tips of your fingers to keep from aggravating it. His muscle feels like a tennis ball under your hands, and you try not to think about that too much, but the thought settles down somewhere in your lower abdomen anyway.

After the tattoo is dressed, you linger on his arm for a moment, just feeling the heat from the fire and his body next to yours. He's looking at you now, and you know he can see your eyes through the shades at this range. It's unsettling.

GT: Youre thinking about all that quote unquote nonsense again arent you.

TT: I'm just wondering what kind of idiot lets himself actually get caught in quicksand like that. I've been under this happy delusion for most of my life that such a played out disaster scenario could only happen to ambitious anthropologists in your shitty adventure movies and not to normal, actual people.

GT: The kind of hard boiled idiot with a can do attitude and a keen desire to save your FLIPPING LIFE!

TT: Still embarrassed about that, huh?

GT: Yes and what a brilliant way to try to change the subject i might add.

You sigh, glad that he can't hear you do it, and look off into the distance at the towers glowing golden against the green sky for a moment. When you look back at him, it takes your eyes a second to adjust to the brightness of the fire. The two of you haven't talked about it, and you don't particularly _want_ to talk about it either. The masks give you an excuse. Sorry, bro, I can't have a heart-to-heart with you right now because those kinds of things really do need to be done face-to-face, and if we do that we'll die. Shucks.

You don't even realize that your hand is still on his forearm until he grabs it, and his hand is a lot warmer than yours. He's been sitting closer to the fire, so the other side of his body is burning hot compared to you. Up until the bandages came out, you'd been sitting on the ledge with your boots dangling over, watching the underlings march around like a fucking anthropomorphic skeleton brigade. It had been cool and open over there, which was night and day to how you felt right now with the heat radiating from the fire and from Jake's skin next to yours, stealing your breath better than the atmosphere could ever dream of doing.

"Dirk," you can hear him say, and his voice sounds a lot more distant than his body, which flush against your side. He's scooted closer to you while you were looking away, and now his bandaged arm is brushing up on your arm- the one with the complementary tattoo, because he's facing the fire and you're facing out, toward the sky. Best bros, right? Right.

You'd always felt there was a lot of homoerotic subtext in your Bro's movies, but you could never tell if it was wishful thinking or not, and it bugged you to think about your Bro like that, so you never thought about it too deeply. Until your lowercase b bro decided he wanted a tattoo in a pair with yours, and now you can't stop thinking about it.

"Dirk," he says again, louder although it doesn't make much difference.

TT: What?

"No, goddammit, talk to me." To your horror, he wrenches the mask off of his head and sets it down on the ground. You can hear him clearly now, but holy fucking shit.

TT: What the fu

You stop mid-sentence because it's pointless to talk this way if he's got his mask off. Not as though he can 'hear' you without his computer. "What the fuck are you doing?"

"It's very selfish of you to keep avoiding the subject every time I come around to trying to discuss things with you, Strider. Did it ever occur to you that maybe I have my own reasons for wanting to talk about them with you? Reasons that _don't_ include making you uncomfortable?" His hand is still on yours, and it's making your heart beat loudly in your ears. You can't tell if you're more unnerved or aroused, but it's definitely causing some kind of erotic distortion.

"If you wanted to make me uncomfortable, I reckon you'd just-"

"I can't fucking hear you in that thing, you know!" he interrupted you. "But maybe that's for the better. No need to talk over you if I can't hear you in the first place, am I right? Can't hear your protests, either." Wow, that sounded familiar. "I told your Autoresponder that I had things to tell you, and I bloody well intend to tell them, whether you're in a listening mood or not."

Every breath is an effort because of the way your heart is beating in your throat with the fear that this happy idiot will just keep talking until he very fucking literally passes out. That would be a hell of a way to go, off on some monologue tangent about things that are probably better left unsaid anyway, even _if_ you were in a place where you can't choke on the air itself. You want to say something, but you know that this will go faster if you shut up and let him say whatever he has to say, even though everything inside you wants to squash that train of thought like it's a rapidly reproducing pest.

"There are things… that a man… has to tell his best bro." Jake licks his lips and actually giggles. "There's this elephant in the room… that I need to… extricate… wow." He cracks a large grin, like one of the voices in his head just told him he most hilarious joke in the world- or maybe like you're the sweetest thing he's ever seen in his entire life, and as warm and fuzzy as that might otherwise make you feel, you have a sinking idea that it's the gas starting to hit some key receptors in his brain. "I just feel as though these past few months have been… the most rip-roaring good ol' time of my life… but if I'm being very honest I do feel as though something is missing." He giggled again. "Oh goddammit, Strider, why am I laughing? This is actually very serious business I… want to discuss…"

His breaths are coming deeper and deeper, and you know that he's only doing more damage. Keep sucking, kiddo, you're on the express train to Euphoria with a mandatory blackout detour to Asphyxia.

"Dude. Put your fucking mask on," you demand, hoping he takes the imperative. You grab his shoulders for emphasis, and he grabs yours back.

"No! I intend to speak my piece until all that needs spoking's been… spought? Spoken. Yes." His head starts nodding, but you're the one panicking, chewing your lips until you think you can taste blood. You reach around him to grab his helmet and try to force it on, but he fights back, and he still has some wicked strength even when oxygen-deprived. Mother. Fucker. "Dirk," he says again, and his head is still tilted down so that he's looking up at you through his dark, thick eyelashes. "Dirk, for the life of me… I'm not putting that helmet back on. I think you know… what you have to do."

Your mouth pops open in surprise at that. This asshole is playing you, in a most wicked instance of role-reversal and cosmic fucking irony that you really would never have thought him capable of. You wonder if he learned how to do this from you, or if he came up with it all on his own. Either way, you think you might love the fucking idiot for it.

You take as deep of a breath as you can pull and then shove your own mask off, pulling him toward you and pressing your lips to his. His lips are warm like the rest of him, and they part immediately to take the air you blow into his mouth. Shotgunning oxygen like the truest of motherfucking bros, that's you two. His hands are back on your shoulders, and even after you give him all the air you've got, he holds you in place. He parts his lips wider and crawls into your lap, one knee on each side of your hips and wrapping his arms around the back of your neck. There's no mistaking that he's kissing you, and that's pretty much been the plan all along, hasn't it? To put you in a position where you had to kiss him to save his life.

Again: Mother. Fucker.

It doesn't take long for your body to respond to what's happening- the fact that you haven't gotten off in an obscenely long time, something like at least a week and maybe longer, doesn't really hurt in that respect- and anyway Jake is clawing at your tank top and pulling it over your head until the two of you are chest-to-chest (time for that face-to-face heart-to-heart, you think, and maybe you'll get out of this ordeal both without dying and without having to actually say any _words_). He has a lot more chest hair than you do, and it's scratchy like a thin layer of sand. It feels fucking amazing, and it's so _warm_. Everything about him is warm, particularly his mouth and the tongue you feel just barely pushing on the inside of your lips.

Also the erection you can feel pressing up on your stomach through his goddamn booty shorts. There's also that, and it's the warmest thing yet.

You put your arms around his lower back and spread your legs so that his ass sinks to the ground between them, and now the two of you are on level ground with each other. You feel a tightness in your chest but also the sensation that your body is starting to float, like you could do anything you fucking wanted to right now, so you dig your fingers into his hips and pull away to suck deep breaths of the terrible air and bite just under his jaw line. Maybe that's just what you wanted to do, maybe you're pissed off at him for doing this but too turned on to stop, and this seems to be a worthy fucking compromise.

He's pushing against you and you're pushing back, so you've got this slow boat-rocking thing going on, rubbing up against each other while you slobber on his neck as though you've lost control of your fine motor skills and just want to taste him, finally fucking taste him. You've waited way too long for this, and you think maybe he had a point. Maybe you were just wasting time. Who knows how much time you have left, anyway. Any of you. All four of you. You know it should scare the shit right out of you, but your body has a hard time registering that fear. You're cool as a fucking cucumber and right as fucking rain right now.

Jake grabs your hair at the nape of your neck and pulls you away, holding your face in front of him and looking you in the eyes. You can finally see the green, without two layers of dark helmet visor between the two of you. There's nothing between the two of you right now but a few inches of the thinnest fucking air you've ever breathed, and it's way too much. "We're running out of time, you know," he says, slurring the words a little.

"Was just thinking that," you say, and you're a bit startled by how hard it is to form the words. You'll both need to put your masks on in a minute, so there's no time for satisfaction to be had. That just pisses you off even more, so you push forward again and mash your lips against his, way harder than necessary, but- actually, no, fuck that. It is absolutely fucking necessary. Totally fucking critical that you do this right now, because you didn't do it for so long and soon you won't be able to anymore.

His breath is harsh and rapid, but he's every bit as in the moment as you are, digging his jagged fingernails into your shoulder blades. Fuck, that hurts. You feel a burning sensation rising in your chest, but it's muted, like your brain doesn't want to pay attention to it or maybe can't for some reason. Your sensory perception is dying, draining away because you can't suck enough oxygen down to fuel the spark that has the two of you all lit up like Christmas trees. Your heartbeat is loud but weak in your ears and you think you might be getting tunnel vision, but that could just be the light of the fire fading away to nothing. Fading… yeah.

You fight to hold on, moaning weakly in annoyance and desperation that you can't extend the moment. You want to keep feeling Jake's breath on your cheek and his lips against yours. He lets out a choked noise, almost a sob, and suddenly you feel his hands at the fly of your jeans. His hands are shaking violently, either from desperation or asphyxiating muscle fibers or both, and it's so unlike watching him unbutton his shirt with that weird gracefulness. "There's no- time for that-" you huff.

"I don't fucking care!" he says and shoves your pants down. You lift your hips to help him slide them off, and you should be cold because now you're just naked, but the fire is warm and Jake is warm, and it's all- it's too hot- it's really too hot for you to focus on anything except Jake's hand on your dick and how that also makes you feel more breathless than anything that is or isn't in the air. Your breath is shallower than ever, and you're just barely on this side of hyperventilating, but somehow you manage to aim your hands vaguely in the direction of Jake's fly. He shoves you away. "No- this is for you. This is what I wanted- to tell you, if you'd have just let me."

You rest your head on his shoulder because you're too weak and too aroused to protest, and anyway your head suddenly feels as though it's made of bricks, so it drops of its own accord. He's got his face pressed into your neck, and you feel something wet, like maybe he's drooling or his eyes are watering, but mostly you can just feel his rough fingers wrapped around you and stroking you, pooling all of the sensation that you have left to feel in your dick. You feel it loud and clear, unlike anything else at the moment, and maybe if you had more time- maybe- but you're already a lot closer than you thought possible. Your worthless breath hitches in your chest, and you moan again, seeing dark spots blooming in front of your face. "Don't stop," you whisper. "Jake- do not fucking stop."

He bites your shoulder with determination, and he's probably using up way more oxygen than you are what with how rapidly he's working his muscles, but impressively he doesn't stop. You will never underestimate that guy's manliness or willingness to do whatever it takes to get a job done ever again. Fucker has huevos the size of watermelons.

Your throat is closing, and you hold on to it with one hand, rubbing it softly as though you can coax it to hold on, just hold on, just a few more seconds. Jake pulls up your face with his free hand and kisses you again, and it's soft and kinda all over the place because neither of you can really control anything anymore, but you need to feel him against you because you're gonna- you're almost- Fuck, you're not gonna make it. You open your mouth to try to say something, but nothing comes out. You don't have anything left.

Just as panic starts setting in, you feel a tightening in your balls that almost makes you cry with relief. You're going to make it- in fact, you are making it, right fucking now. Coming without oxygen is like having something ripped dry through your abdomen. It's actually pretty painful, and you let out a noise that's half squeak and half sob, because you just have nothing to give. Absolutely nothing.

Instead of blacking out, you white out.

When you come to, your mask is back on, and you're slumped against Jake's shoulder again, but it's the other one this time. You get the feeling that you've been moved around, and none too gently, either. Jake has his mask on too, but you're still naked and he's still shirtless. The warmth from the fire doesn't feel quite so oppressive, but you're sweating something awful. It's a little bit gross, but Jake doesn't seem to mind.

GT: Guess we were in a right fucking state werent we? I blacked out too but fortunately I got our masks back on first!

TT: Your overwhelming desire to fondle my anatomy almost just got us killed. How can you be so fucking chipper right now?

GT: Yes thats a very good question strider especially considering the fact that im the one who has been left out in the cold here. *reaches for kerchief. dabs away flop sweat*

TT: Oh my god, don't RP. I can see you. Just do the thing. You're not even doing it. Anyway, you're also the one who thought it was a good idea to tempt fate just to get me to kiss you, when all you had to do was ask.

GT: *manly yet suggestive wink*

You shake your head and wrap your arms around his lower back again, feeling his chest rise and fall steadily with each breath. You try to time your breaths to match his, so that you're rocking back and forth again but in a different context.

GT: For what its worth im sorry for the spot of manipulation that i had to pull on you but i guess thats becoming par for the course round these parts.

GT: At least i finally got to speak my mind although granted that calling it speaking is playing a bit fast and loose with the truth.

GT: It was the only way i could think to get you to listen to me! Not that it wasnt something i wanted to do anyway which i guess was sort of the point of this whole rigmarole in the first place.

GT: Strider?

"Hmm?" You are far too tired to use real words right now, so you just have to hope that he can hear you.

He tilts your face up the same as he did before, sliding his mask up to the top of his head and doing the same to yours. Your eyes go wide, but before you can say anything, he says, "Shh, just for a moment," and kisses you one more time, softly. He lingers for a moment, but just a moment, as promised, and then pushes your masks back down.

GT: I do hope this means that youll listen to me when im trying to tell you something from now on so that i wont have to resort to such ridiculous measures.

GT: I enjoyed it thoroughly and from the looks of things so did you. But to be completely honest that was a bit close for comfort.

He looks down at his stomach in the middle of it, likely while the neurolinguistic software picks up the phrase "from the looks of things", and you follow his gaze, noticing that you'd left quite a mess on his stomach.

TT: Oh, man. Why didn't you clean that up?

GT: The answer is very simple and its because it isnt my mess!

You don't have it in you to be exasperated, so you smile despite yourself. "Oh, right. It's a matter of _principle_ on the subject of dried-on splooge. What a fucking martyr," you mutter, and you notice him giving you a look, but you're pretty sure he couldn't hear you. A spare t-shirt from your sylladex works fine as a rag, and you wipe down the warm skin of Jake's stomach. It feels overwhelmingly intimate, and you're a little uncomfortable but also strangely satisfied.

When you finish, he grabs his blankets out of his own sylladex and lies back against the floor. You normally sleep pretty close together, but you'd been using separate blanket piles because, well, you guess because you hadn't talked about anything yet. Apparently that's different now, because you stretch out beside him and he folds the blanket around the both of you.

You've both been sleeping alone for as long as you can remember, but you're rapidly discovering that it's a hell of a lot better when you don't have to. Sleeping with a gas mask on isn't the easiest thing in the world, but with Jake next to you like this it's pretty hard to care. You think about offering to return the favor- because even though the gas masks are back on, your jerking-off muscles are still functional- but he's already falling asleep. You decide to save it for another day, but this is a debt that won't go unpaid. For now, you need to sleep. There's still shit out there that needs wrecking.


End file.
